We were all snuggled up on the sofa yesterday afternoon watching the new BBC program Africa. It is an amazing program with brilliant footage of the African landscape and its inhabitants. If you watched this weeks episode, you probably know where I'm going with this, but there was a group of elephants trawling through the dusty Savannah and they were struggling due to the lack of water and foliage. One of the very young elephants, quite literally keeled over from exhaustion and loss of nutrition and died under it's mothers watchful gaze. It was heart breaking. I had silent tears rolling down my cheeks and as the mother walked sadly away both L and A started sobbing.
I wasn't surprised at L as he is a very sensitive soul and he is currently obsessed with animals, so I knew he would find the scene distressing. A on the other hand I was quite surprised at as she is only three and I didn't think she would understand. Having said that, it was extremely powerful and she is a sharp little cookie, so even though she has no concept of death, she could sense that all was not well.
My husband quickly jumped in as the scene changed and told the children that the elephant was OK and hadn't died and that the camera men would have helped the animal and it was fine now. He added later when they showed a different young elephant that there it was running around.
I didn't say anything at the time, but I disagreed with what he had done. I understood why he said that, his children were upset and he wanted to protect them, however, I see these rare opportunities as a good time to talk about topics that are often not discussed or that are difficult to approach. Death is such a tricky subject to broach with children. We are incredibly lucky, our family has not been affected by death so far and apart from the death of a gold fish, the children have never had to deal with it at all.
They talk about death and killing regularly; well the boys do as they act out fighting games war games both at home and at school. L in particular uses phrases when he is being over dramatic about death and dying. Like a lot of parents, we do try and shield them from TV, films and games that are we consider to be too old or inappropriate for them. On the whole, this has worked and although R who is nearly nine, does often question my judgement on this subject, he seems to accept that I make the choice in his best interest. We also tried to avoid having too many weapons and 'fighting' toys in the house, but boys will be boys and they find ways of making weapons out of any old random object from a surprisingly young age and as they migrate into boys televisions programs there is always something with fighting and monsters or bad guys being 'destroyed'.
These days, they often 'kill' each other whether it be on the Wii playing super heroes or running around shooting each other with Nerf guns, but does that really give them any concept of death and what it means? Not really. In a lot of TV and game situations, the characters get up again and everything carries on. If only it was like that in real life.
Don't get me wrong, I am hugely relieved that my children have never had to lose anyone close to them and I hope that it remains that way for a long time to come, but what happened today did make me consider when should you broach the subject with your children. Do you wait until they reach a certain age? Do you wait until someone close to them dies?
I definitely don't have any of the answers but I don't think it hurts to broach the subject when an opportunity arises. It is such a temptation to protect our children and to wrap them up in cotton wool but death happens, it is an important part of life and for me I would prefer to prepare my children for that as gently as I can before they really have to deal with it for themselves. I have always tried to be upfront with my children about things and if they ask me something outright, I always try to be as honest as I can (that has backfired on me on numerous occasions) but I look at R who will be nine in a couple of weeks and he is very mature now and understands a lot more than we probably give him credit for. It is easy to assume that children will grow up and just find out these things for themselves, but I want them to be able to talk to me about anything and everything if they want to and I also want to prepare them for real life. Bad things happen. I don't want them to have nightmares and to worry, but the good often outweighs the bad and personally I think that is a lesson we need to teach them.
R did ask me later on if the baby elephant had really died but as L was listening, I side stepped the question, rather than lie or upset L again. However if we see something like that again, I will explain to L that it is all part of the 'circle of life' as I do think he needs to understand not only what the words mean but also that when he says things like 'I want to die' or ' I wish I/he/she was dead', he actually understands the implications of what he is saying.
What pops into the head of a very busy, usually stressed out mum of four!
Nice post to highlight the issue. Unfortunately I had no choice when my childrens dad died when they were very young. Having said that from studying death and bereavement in University it is clear children cope with loss worse in modern times because they are shielded from it. In past times when granny/grandad lived with the family and often died at home it was a natural part of life and children accepted it as such more easily. Everyone knew someone who had a relative die,often at home.People were laid out in the front room of the house for visitors after death. It equipped children to deal with later loss better.It was, as it is , a natural part of life. Now death is sanitized and hidden. Not a healty approach I think.
ReplyDeleteAww the elephant/wildlife programmes so often reduce me to tears hat I have started avoiding them. I agree with you tho, in my experience young children can cope with death of those around them more pragmatically than we can. Pet are a good early experience of death for a lot of children. I have to say tho, that when discussing anything like that with kids I do wish I was religious, be lovely to paint a pretty picture of heaven. I usually opt for the some people think this, some people think that approach, to soften the death is the end thing!!
ReplyDeleteThis is a good topic and great post. I had to deal with death when I told my son my stepmother was not my mom, but my mother had passed away. We started out very simply with it and he seems comfortable with it, doesn't ask tons of questions but it does come up occasionally and I'm always uncomfortable! However, he seems to handle it well. I just answer honestly, sometimes vaguely and quickly and move on. When he deals with real death it'll be another story and I hope that won't happen for a long time. Until then, he knows that people do die, he knows a few reasons why and that's all he needs to know!
ReplyDeleteDeath is not something I am at all comfortable talking about or even thinking about, and I'm 26! I was really angry when I found out my MIL had taken my 5yo daughter to a graveyard to "see her great nanny". I feel she is far too young and its inappropriate. My MIL has filled her head with all these weird notions of death that she uses to comfort herself but that I don't believe or agree with. I don't think I will discuss it with her until she's old enough to ask.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and a tough question! It's a difficult subject and we haven't really broached it. My own grandparents died when my eldest was 4. He knew them, but wasn't old enough to understand. I'm pleased to say they are the only deaths we have had to deal with.
ReplyDeleteI used to say road kill was just sleeping... Its a hard subject to talk about .xx
ReplyDeleteI'm always completely honest, but factual rather than emotional. I will acknowledge that it makes us feel sad, but that this is what happens in the real world. I'll always cuddle them and reassure them about people close to them, but I think they handle it much better when they know all the facts. There's less to fixate on that way.
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